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In 1990, Simon Clarke inaugurated two decades of research of the former Soviet Union through an international collaboration with Russian sociologists that examined a society in the throes of transformation. Along with his colleague Peter Fairbrother, Simon developed a network of Russian researchers in the Institute of Comparative Labour Relations Research. Together they produced a corpus of work that meticulously analysed the impact of economic reform on workplaces and households and the response of workers and their organisations. This piece is an extended version of a published interview with Simon conducted by two of his former students, Sarah Ashwin and Valery Yakubovich. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of Hungarian sociology in the state-socialist period can certainly be described in terms of a general Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) historical model, the most important feature of which is the undivided power of the Communist Party. Under such conditions, the Soviet Union and local political power holders had a direct influence on the institutionalization and functioning of sciences, including sociology. The study contributes to understanding the social impact of the 1956 revolution, particularly its crushing effect on the development of Hungarian sociology in relation to the general model. Firstly, the early development of sociology in the Soviet Union and most state-socialist countries in the 1950s was blocked in Hungary by the 1956 revolution. The trauma of the 1956 revolution made all groups of society, including the intelligentsia, realize that the system could not be changed in the long term. At the same time, it made it clear to the political authorities that the system could not be maintained in the long run with methods of the past. As a result, Kádár's consolidation relied heavily on a compromising intelligentsia, needed for its expertise (in this case, modern sociological expertise) and legitimizing the system. Consequently, sociology in Hungary started developing and became institutionalized in the early 1960s. In this situation, sociology represented both a critical point of view opposing the system and, at the same time, a tool of its - covert or overt - legitimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article maps the development of the sociology of culture in the Soviet Union and Russia from pre-Soviet to post-Soviet times. The analysis highlights the effects of two groups of factors – one cultural, the other structural – the combination of which brought about various patterns at each stage of the discipline’s development. Because of the political environment within which they worked, Soviet researchers of culture had to employ strategies of resistance to survive. The three most common were: finding niches in related, ideologically neutral disciplines; doing purely empirical work; or, in contrast, critiquing ‘bourgeois social theories’. They also opted to work in the modes of reading rather than writing, oral discussions rather than publishing, and communication with like-minded colleagues rather than debates with opponents. Contemporary Russian sociology of culture displays this inheritance in being structured by the opposition between isolation and international integration, as well as the tension between an elitist vision of culture and the economically centered worldview which has been dominant since the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]